There are plenty of philosophies and methodologies for using email more efficiently. They are foundational for limiting distraction and being more productive. But you also need to know what tools are at your disposal to get to that more productive place.

Email service providers and third-party app developers have invented some exceptional tools that make email much more efficient. There are five that I think have the greatest effect and are most widely applicable. Together, they will help you

write better emails,

turn emails into tasks,

undo sending of emails,

schedule sending of emails, and

snooze emails.

Write Better Writing unnecessarily long or unclear emails is a waste of time. The recipient may not have time to read them in the first place, or may waste time reread them to try to make sense of them, or may have to reply to the sender for clarification. Plus, there's all the wasted time spent writing them in the first place.

There are two apps that work hard to help you write better emails because they focus on the writing itself: Grammarly and Crystal.

Grammarly is a plug-in that works something like a spell checker to analyze grammar and actually make intelligent suggestions about how to tighten your language, write clearly, and fix common mistakes. It has a remarkable ability to spot ESL errors in particular.

Crystal is also a plug-in, and it nudges you to tailor the language of your email to appeal to the recipient. It works like this: Crystal first finds your recipients online—their Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and so forth—and looks at how they use and respond to language. Are they concise and direct? Or do they tend to get caught up in lengthy discussions? Based on the results, Crystal guides your writing.

If you are not a strong writer, Crystal's very clear prompts may genuinely help you find words to write what you want to say. That's a valuable proposition, but there is something about it that it rubs me the wrong way. There's an unstated premise that you are tailoring your language to get something out of the other person, and I find that manipulative. It might not bother you, however, or it might even be exactly what you are looking for. There's no denying that it's good at what it does, at any rate.

Turn Emails Into TasksYour inbox is not your to-do list, but you probably still get tasks assigned to you by email. The fix is to set up a connected app to efficiently move those tasks to a more appropriate place.

Rather than manually type a new task for yourself in whatever to-do or reminder app you use, connect the app directly to your email account or set up email forwarding, and with one or two clicks, move that email into its proper place.

A few apps that support the ability to move emails to another app, either through direct connection or email forward, are Wunderlist, Evernote Plus and Premium, Todoist Premium, Boxer, and Newton Mail.

Undo Send We've all hit Send prematurely, whether it's because we overlooked a typo, left out some information, or didn't stop to reconsider an email written in the heat of the moment. You don't have to live with regret or the inefficiency of having to write a second email, however. You just need to be able to undo send.

Undo send is different from recalling a message. With undo send, the message is never sent. Basically, your email holds the message for something like 10 to 30 seconds, during which time you can change your mind.

Gmail has an Undo Send button (see video below for how to set it up) that every Gmail user should enable. Newton Mail (which is full of rich features for email on mobile devices) also has one that works on any email account it supports, and that includes Microsoft Exchange and iMap accounts. Other email providers offer it, too.

Schedule Send "Right now" is not always the appropriate time to send an email. That's when schedule send comes in handy. This email feature lets you pick a time in the future when your message will be delivered. Outlook, Boomerang for Gmail, and Newton Mail all have it.

With schedule send, as long as the message hasn't gone out yet, you can still edit it, too. So it covers some of the same ground as the undo send feature.

Snooze I'm not a fan of the Inbox Zero philosophy of trying to keep your unread message count at nothing. It takes too much time to manage and doesn't address people's real email needs, psychologically or technically. I am a fan of snoozing, though, which gets at the same idea of keeping the number of messages in your inbox minimized at any given time.

Snoozing does nothing more than hide a message from your inbox for a time. How long? You decide. The effect is you can focus on important messages without being distracted by less important ones. Those less important messages will resurface at a time when it's better for you to deal with them. Outlook (where it's called "schedule"), Airmail, Sparkmail, and Newton Mail all have a snooze button.

If you're interested in being more productive (and who isn't?) you should take a look at my roundup of The Best Productivity Apps. No matter what your work efficiency issues are, there should be several apps or services there that will help you make better use of your time.

About the Author

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, specializing in productivity apps, as well as health and fitness technology. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on keeping your digital life tidy and tidying up your real life using technology. She is the author of the book Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life and writes abou... See Full Bio

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